


Guess I’m factual and fiction

by marginalia



Category: Us (Movie 2019)
Genre: Dream Logic, F/F, one soul two bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 05:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21351355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: Adelaide tries to forget and almost succeeds except for the nights when she comes to herself in her dreams.
Relationships: Adelaide Wilson/Red (Us Movie 2019)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Guess I’m factual and fiction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).

1

In the beginning, she has no name. There is no need for that Below. Perhaps before the Tethered were abandoned, but there is no need for names anymore. 

In the beginning, she is drawn to the surface. Slowly, silently, one tiny step at a time, always operating on her own level, even then. No one else is like her. She was born special. In her dreams she floats up, a balloon of a girl, out of reach of everything that wants to hold her down, drifting towards _her_. The shadow.

When she awakens she falls, so small, struggling to settle on such a cold bed, metal bars cutting the palms of her hands.

On that night it all comes together. It's their birthday, she'll learn later - there is no need for birthdays Below - and maybe that is why she knew it was the right time. They - she knows now that they’re her parents, but also they were never what parents would be Above - are fighting and no one is watching as one small creature slips up up and away. No one is watching when she finds her shadow and pounces. No one is watching when she binds her shadow to the bed, stickysour little girl shadow breaths coming fast and scared.

She draws her finger down the center of the shadow’s forehead, over the bridge of her nose, and pauses on the trembling upper lip. She smiles, teeth bared, and is gone.

She steps into the night air, the ocean breeze, the smells of salt water and fried food and garbage left too long in the sun and she tilts her face to the pure light of the stars.

She hears the voices first, the voices then the pounding of feet, the smack of the hand grabbing too tight around her arm, her mother but not her mother dropping to her knees on the boardwalk, _Adelaide, baby, baby, where did you go? Are you hurt? What is wrong with you? I was so scared!_

She doesn't know what to say to this or how to say it, or even how to move her face in a way that will seem right. She looks at the stars and lets herself be held just to see what it feels like.

She is Adelaide now.

2

Below, the first thing she lost was her name. She was still cuffed, still crying gasping choking tears, wrists raw as she tried to wriggle free, but as her mother said her name aloud Above it pulled away from her, drifted, and was gone. It belonged to someone else now.

Later, she would give names to the other Tethered. She gave the name Red to herself. A strong name. A warrior’s name. A name to carry her back Above.

Some nights she would send herself Above through pure desperation. Her body still in the cold bunk, but her desire to be home roiled through her so strong it transported her there. In dreams Red saw a silver string she could follow up to the surface and home, a string tied around her wrist and the wrist of the girl who had stolen everything. Red followed it to the girl, safe in their warm bed, slipped in beside her, pressed their bodies together as if she thought they could make them one.

One soul, two bodies. It hurt more every time Red was pulled away by waking. It never hurt enough to make her stop.

3

Above, Adelaide is learning. She is becoming human in the way of the humans Above. She tries to make herself forget what it is like to be Tethered. She pretends that she is not Tethered still. She tells herself the story over and over again until it becomes true: her story of how she was lost on her birthday. The hall of mirrors. The girl who looked like her.

It’s a good story. She believes it for an hour, a week, a year. She doesn’t tell her story out loud. No matter how many times her parents or her therapist asks. Not once. Not ever.

Adelaide throws herself into everything Above has to offer. She dances. She loves. She basks in the sunshine and eats fresh berries and breathes the mountain air. She tries to forget and almost succeeds except for the nights when she comes to herself in her dreams. It gets stronger as she gets older, the overwhelming desire of the shadow curling around her, pressing into her skin, fingers in her mouth, a weight on her chest, a voice calling _please please please_ and a silver string spinning a cocoon around them. Sometimes she wakes up, fingers warm and wet, a memory of a determined tongue, and she doesn’t know who was touching whom.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

4

After Abraham, Red began to form a plan. She took what she remembered of Above, tiny snippets of little girl shadow memories, and strung it all together: a paper chain of dolls, a fragile ritual, for what is ritual if not the things you knew as a child repeated until they have lost all original meaning, now imbued with the power of time and habit alone.

Red built a world on the memory of the world she left behind. She assigned names to the Tethered, for in losing her name she had learned the power of naming and in being named. 

She gave hope to the Tethered as she dressed them in jumpsuits and placed scissors in their hands. She kissed them on the forehead, a benediction, and pushed them towards the surface.

She is their mother now. A half-souled savior for half a revolution.

When she falls, with Adelaide’s hands on her and her breath so close, it’s a relief. She sighs, one last rust-choked rattle. She’s home.

5

After, it’s like Red is still in her. Two halves of the same soul all in one body now. Maybe this is how it was always meant to be.

Red wants to see everything Above, everything she’s missed. The Tethered are on their own now to tether or untether as they see fit. Red takes over sometimes when Adelaide is too tired to stop her. Adelaide is lucky Red gives her herself back. She knows what she’s taken now and she doesn’t regret it, but she doesn’t forget it either.

Adelaide answers questions Red doesn’t ask her. “It’s shocking how much you can not think about it,” she whispers. “You can not think about it for days and weeks at a time. Once a whole year.” Red bites at their lip, draws blood. Adelaide licks it away, a flick of pink tongue. “But not anymore.”

Adelaide dreams and when she awakens she can feel the bruises at her throat, at her inner thigh, prints of her fingers and not her fingers all at once, the taste of candied apple on her tongue. 

A shadow, a monster, two girls, one woman. 

One road.


End file.
